The Ringer NFL Show - The Play Sheet [VIDEO]: Did Kyle Shanahan Blow It in the Super Bowl? (No.)

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

After another disappointing postseason finish for Kyle Shanahan, it's tempting to put the blame for the 49ers' Super Bowl LVIII loss squarely on him. But The Ringer's Ben Solak makes the case that it wasn't lack of preparation, play-calling, or some faulty scheme that made the Niners lose the championship to the Kansas City Chiefs. Subscribe to the Ringer NFL channel for more videos, and check out all the Ringer NFL podcasts on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey,dy, I'm Ben Solac. I'm back from Las Vegas. My voice is totally shot. Super Bowl's in the books. Chiefs are NFL champions. Walking in the play sheet. Where am I, because I came out of as at the Super Bowl. The opening script, did Shanahan choke? No. End of episode. Before we say anything about this game, we should acknowledge something about this game. And that said it was wacky. There were seven total fumbles in this game. Multiple came in the red zone. Multiple came on. Pump. Like special teams was a huge deal. There was a blocked extra point. There was a blocked 50-yard fuel that actually still went in. There was a pun down at the one. Like, there was a lot situationally that went on to make this game kind of weird. Look at the NGS win probability chart.

This is like, firstly, all this, everything in quarterfant overtime crazy. It broke the chart. What is this? It doesn't make any sense. We got five whole quarters of very zany football on Sunday. And that means that whoever won both got very lucky and was going to have some like keep plays that they could be like, oh, this is what won it for us. And whoever lost was going to have some self-inflicted wounds that they could point to and say, hey, this is why we lost. So,

we should not make sweeping generalizations about the Chiefs and about the 49ers just based on that Super Bowl. I think it's fair to do it like off of the playoffs, right? I think the playoffs, like Patrick Mahomes played perfect football, mistake-free football, and he became more of like a game managing quarterback. I think that's worthy of note. Steve Spagnolo and the Chief's defense all season long, such an incredible unit. That's worthy of notes. So like multi-game samples is fine, but for this game alone, we should resist the temptation to come away with, like, big, huge conclusions. With that said, there is always the temptation to talk about Kyle Shanahan's mistakes

in these Super Bowls and these key games that he, unfortunately, keeps losing. I want to talk about some of the narratives and some of the question marks about Shanahan and how he approached this game and largely just, like, debunk some ideas that he's hugely at fault for the Niners' loss. Let's go to play action. One of the first narratives you've seen come out of this game is that Kyle Shanhan abandoned the run, something that he's been liable for, dead in 2016, right? Falcons against Patriots, 28 to 3.

I don't think that's super fair here. I really think the Chiefs were doing a ton to take the running game away and to invite the 49ers to pass. The first thing they were doing is Run Blitzin. This is first and 10 on the opening drive, all right? 49ers have yet to encounter a third down. They are matriculating the football down the field. Inside the 31st and 10, we are going to present a formation that's got a split.

run past strength, right? We have two tight ends. We'll tie in a fullback down here to the tight side of the field. This was a really strong run side. And then to the top of the screen, our two top receivers with all this space, look at all this room to the wide side of the field. So the passing strength is over here, right?

This creates an issue for the chief's defense. However, what the chiefs are going to do, right? Initially, this looks like a nice space around the football right here, right? But it's a trick. They are always run blitzing. What they're bringing is Leo Chanel into the B gap. And George Carlottis, that edge rusher right there, is bouncing out and now become that C-Gap defender.

So they're adding an additional player to the line of scrimmage to the surface to try to take away any strong side runs, which is what they get. Let's go end zone view. This is split zone for the Niners, right? They're going to get Kyle Ushik moving across the split zone player. And then everybody else's zone steps, the zone flow. Initially against this look, it's nice and easy, right? Double team here and climb, double team here and climb.

Once you introduce Leo Chanel, right? And he becomes like defensive tackle-like alignment, right? And I add right at the snap, you have Mike Pennell bounce to be over the center. You have George Carloth, this bounce to be outside of this tight end. You muddy up the blocks a little bit, right? First, you're going to make the office alignment think a little bit more on their feet because you just change the picture of the snap. The second thing you get is, and they were getting this all game,

you're going to get a hard wall right here from Leo Chanel. He's going to win this block against the right guard here, John Feliciano. Watch Leo. Right, let's run at full speed. Watch Leo step down and bench press. come on, that's a linebacker right there. But you set this wall right here. You are forcing zone flow to come back into the middle of the field.

You are forcing it to go where help is. Chiefs did this excellently, so well all game. Now, all right, forces, you know, create a wall, Christian McCaffrey or the linebacker still have to tackle. This very well could be like a neutral or even positive play for the 49ers because McCaffrey's been running the ball well all season. He's incredible. What does end up happening?

Mike Pinell gets half a paw on the ball. Leo Chanel turns around, gets his paw on the ball. dribbles free, George Carl Loft is with the recovery. So first you're talking about Niners not lucky, but secondly, that run block, that run blitz,

that's what's important here. Now, the other blitz that the Chiefs really love, and they love to bring the corner off the tight side of the field, right? This Logerius Sneed,

right, to this tight side of the field, it's the balls in the left hash. And then when, when Sneed comes, this safety comes down in demand coverage, this safety rotates deep half,

and then the nickel, Trent McDuffie, becomes the new deep half safety. See this? this, this, that rotation that we've got right there. They love this. We'll see it again later in the game. What again, what this allows you to do is to create a wall against zone flow, right?

Now, for most teams, this would not be successful because the wall you're trying to create here is corner against Trent Williams, all right? It's not that you usually lose to that. That's not usually a win. But when you're the Kansas City Chiefs and all your corners are nuts and they're physical and they love to play football, you get that finish right there, right? This turns Christian McCaffrey into the formation. And then we get a beautiful Chris Jones win on the inside, end zone view.

We're going to bump Eushchik over, but this is zone flow again, right? It's going to be zone, zone, zone. Ushik's going to insert here. Watch Chris Jones. Chris Jones is the player to watch because Sneed wins this block, right? Sneed wins that blitz to create this wall. But Chris Jones works backside of Colton McKivitts. If it tries to turn around and slingshot him too slow, Chris Jones is there for the tackle,

and that's no gain on the play. So we are run blitzing, right? This was second and nine. We are run blitzing on early downs to try to put you into third and long. We know you want to run the football. So we are going to blitz to stop the run. That's going to be our approach from Spagnola. So if you're being presented with run blitz on early downs, right? All the, look at this, man, look at all these bodies. This is hard to run against. So if you're being presented with this, you have some options. One of them is to play action pass, right? Try to throw the football. So what they're going to do, they're going to motion Debo Samuel and they're going to fake the give here to Christian McCaffrey and we're going to get just three level stretch, right?

We're going to get Brandon Ayuk deep down the field. George Kill is going to come, downfield crosser and Debo's going to be here underneath, right? We're just going to go play action. When they go play action here, they pull this center, right? He's part of the protection. They end up in a bad look because Leo Chanel is coming on the Big Gap Blitz, right? And they could have sussed this out. They could have figured this out in protection, but they bust it. end zone view. So we've seen this, right? We got Chris Jones here in the B gap. Now, Mike Dan is way, Davehap. Chris Jones is going to end up stem into the A gap. So that way, Leo can come and fill this B gap. This is presumably because they're worried about this give, right? This is get here,

get here, and get here. So that way, if they give the ball to Christian McCaffrey with zone flow, you have the bodies you need to stop that, right? This is the first and 10. This is the first and 10 of the second half. They've been rumblitz in here. What ends up happening is they're pulling the center in protection here. Because after this, this, this play action in McAfre, Brock is inherently going to start rolling out, and you want to have that center walking out with him. You want to have that center as a little bit of a personal protector. Accordingly, this should be blocking down here, blocking down here,

and pre-snap, this looks like Aaron Banks should have Chris Jones. Once Chris Jones stems Agap, and this is scary now because it's Chris Jones. You should give him up to the right guard here, Feliciano, even as the center leaves. And is that going to be an easy block? No, but so long as you get his left side, as long as you get his left shoulder, put the wall right there.

Brock's going to run out this way. And so it's okay. Once he stems, you have to give him up and you have to be that B-Gat player for Leo Chanel incoming. But Banks doesn't see it, right? And so this is why they bust. Pull that center. There's a bump into the right guard.

They were not good to pull in the center in this game. Banks is tunnel on Chris Jones, right? He's got hands on him, eyes on him, hips towards him. Nobody's there for Leo. And so Leo now's got a free run of Brock. And so you try to go play action pass thinking you could take advantage of them being in run blitz, and you just end up in a spot where they get a free runner because you blow the protections. Now Brock is scrambling and he gets rid of the ball,

in completely throw away second and ten. So they go three and out on that drive, first drive of the second half. Second drive of the second half. First and ten, this is not, it's very hard to run against, right? And what you've got here is they walked up Drew Tranquil, right? This is offball linebacker Drew Tranquil, but they play him on ball a lot. They walked him up, right, to that wide side of the field and they have him collision and Trent Williams, right? If you're trying to run zone here, what they're trying to do with with Drew is say, Drew, just get up. up field. Just build this wall right here. McAfee's going to have to bend it back in,

and then we've got bodies, and we can make a tackle. We don't want him getting out here to the boundary. There's actually, there's an example of him getting out of the boundary. This is first quarter Sneed to the top of the screen. I can't tell if Sneed is actually blitzing or if he just gets caught kind of peeking and he's reed and run. But Brandon Ayuk buries him, right? And into the core of the formation, McCaffrey gets the thing, just bounces it. Now's McAfrey in space. They do a good job tackling him. It's all seven-yard gains. This is we're trying to avoid. So, okay, if Drew Tranquell is going to build that wall, we're going to go. play action, right? And we're going to, again, look for

flat right here. Brandi and I yuked underneath. Then George Kill actually fakes the corner and then works to the post. And that's because they have a little leaked out up. Cal Ushchik, right? Remember to start the game, Kyle Eustach got a little route like this where he's on 18-yard pass. Now they're running him on actual leak, right? They're running them down in the field. I mean, the chiefs just, they play, play action beautifully. This is so good.

All right? So, build our wall against the run. Now, Ligerius Sneed is going to give George Kittle away. Eyes on Brandon I, Euk, eyes on the cross, right? That's the first thing that you want. You typically expect to get this open. If you are pressured, you often think you can get this ball to Joanne Jennings, but you can't. What happened?

George Karlofftis reads this and then just collisions the daylight, the daylight out of Joanne Jennings. Jennings doesn't actually want to block here. He wants to get around George Karloftus and go be an active receiver. Carlopthus collisions him. Let's take that route away. as Chris Jones, right? Chris Jones, we saw him again on zone.

He went backside, he went back door on Colt McEvitz and made a play as a tackler. So he goes back drawing Cole and Colt McIvitts again. And, oh, Ross got the ball. Let's go get him. Turn around circle and whatever. Then throw this Johnnings. You should throw this ball away.

You should dirt does he get to second and 10 like he done in the last drive. Completing it is silly because Juan's 11 yards behind line of scrimmage. Leo tackles him. It's second and 18. Okay, so they go three and out on the second drive of the second half.

third drive in the second half. First and 10 is the picture we get. What are the Chiefs up to? I mean, if we're looking at this picture, we've seen this young man in this area, right? And look, he's a little bit further ahead than the other linebackers. Like, we should know what's coming. This is going to be Run Blitz from Leo.

He becomes a new B gap. Dreshawn Warren's the new A gap. Malik Herring's always on the outside. You're building the wall against zone. And initially this looks like, zone, zone, right? George Kittle went and split. zone right here and Kyle Ushik is going to lead and they're going to run zone this direction.

After the first two play action passes don't work, Kyle says, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to look like zone and then this is always going to bend back. And this is always going to be, Chris McAfree looks like he's going to take the hand off here. He actually takes it on the opposite side of Brock Purdy, right? This is meant to look initially like zone. And then you see how Brock flips the ball and they hand this thing off to the weak side. So we are trying to get this block here. We're trying to get this block.

Really what we're trying to do is get Kyle Ushik up here to this linebacker. guard climbs to Nick Bolton, and we're asking Trent Williams to win this reach block one-on-one against Mike Pennell. And Mike Penelman had a heck of the game playing defensive tackle. So this is the key block right here. They need Trent to beat Penel in that space. That's a tough, tough angle here.

Penel holds it, buries Trent Williams, tackled the line of scrimmage. So Niners Tribe, man. I mean, on early downs, they said we are getting cooked with these run blitzes. They're making it very challenging to run. We're going to try to take advantage of this. in the play action pass game. We're going to try to take advantage this with counter runs and with sneaky runs.

They get away from the run blitz action. And they were unsuccessful. The Chiefs were too good at generating pressure off the blitzes and taking away the play action pass concept. So Kyle could have kept running. I could have continued to run like this. And they had successful runs in the second half. But the Chiefs structurally made it very difficult to run the football. And the Niners needed to beat them by passing the football by taking advantage of the one-on-ones,

taking advantage of the space. when the Niners did go to pass the football, especially on late downs, they had some issues. There were multiple plays in the fourth quarter and an overtime. They got a lot of attention for the pass protection. These are third downs that could have won the game for the Niners in scoring territory. Two important ones to talk about. I want to see how the Niners blew pass protection now.

All right, we're just out of the two-minute warning. This is 16 to 16, tie ball game, third and five for the 49ers. Chiefs have two timeouts. If you pick up a first down here, you can run the ball in the next three plays. take the clock pretty much all the way down, not all the way, but close. And then kick a field goal, and you're giving the ball back to Mahomes with very little time left up by three. I know it's scary, but hey, let's say you pick up another first down. You're kicking this field goal with two seconds left.

19 to 16, you win. And Barty Trophy, you pick up this first down. You are very, very, very, very likely to win this game. What we end up getting is a pressure look from Steve Spagnola. Of course we do is what Spaggs does, right? Pre-snap, we got all this motion. You can see Senor Jake Brendel, Sam protection. He's talking it through.

George Kittle ends up being the back in the backfield because they motioned Christian McCaffrey out. Okay, right here we're going to end up snapping the football. They bring Mick Bolton, they bring right here, Tramari Connor, the safety, and they bring Trent McDuffey, the nickel. And McDuffey's the guy who gets loose to free, right? He ends up with a free rush of Brock Birdie.

To me, this entire time, he looks like he's blitzing, right? He never gets lined up over Brandon I.U. He's always kind of hanging around around the interior. He is like a little right here. He's going to backpedal for a second. Like, oh, going into coverage, and then he ends up coming. The safety's over him the entire time, too. We got a cabin safety right here.

So to me, this screams Blitzer. But remember, in the Shanhanan offense, Brock Purdy does not set protections. He doesn't. It's all the center job. And the center was handling all this mess over here, and he was talking to George Kittle. I don't ever think he clocked Trent McDuffie. It's hard for him to see him from where he's lined up. McDuffie ends up coming free in part, I think, because protection-wise,

Brendel and Purdy never really saw him. There's also a George Kettle issue. End zone view. The way protection comes out here is pretty clear, right? We're going to end up with this, this, this, and this, right? I mean, like, those are the foremost eminent, obvious rushers. And then right guard Spencer Burford ends up picking up Tamari Connor when he comes. So now if you're George Kittle, you're going to be forced to read from this potential

rusher right here in Justin Reed all the way over to that potential rush right there in Trent McDuffie. So those are the only two other players who might come. George Kittle is not accustomed, all right, to plan running back and do scanning, right? Scan read and try to figure out who the additional rusher is. And I'm not sure that Brock got the information to George that, hey, that dude looks like he's coming. He looked like he's coming the entire time. And so Kittle never, ever, ever gets his eyes over there, right?

He sees Tomari Connor come and he says, oh, that's a secondary player blitzing. I'm responsible for him. But in reality, Spencer Burford's got that number the entire time. So the Niners did not have like a good player in here to pass protect. Make this use check. Make this something. George Kettle is not accustomed to being here. And I don't think he sees the fuel and sees the responsibilities the way that you'd like for him to.

So he never, ever, ever gets his head over to try McDuffie. McDuffie comes free. Not because anybody in the office the line blew it, but because Kato and Burford are taken two. And McDuffie gets a PPU and they have to kick the field goal now, giving the ball back to Mahomes, who can tie the game. All right, third and four. We're in overtime now. You score seven points. You put the pressure on the Chiefs.

You got to score seven to make this game keep going. We're going to go motion with Christian McCaffrey out of empty, snap the football, and we get to that center pole protection again, right? Center's going to pull here, and then we're going to block down and block down. They get that right this time. And then on the backside, we're going to get George Killers going to kind of leak out into space here. Juan Jennings nice little pivot route. That should have been seven right there.

He was open. I love that call. Remember, he scored on that slant earlier in the games. I love this. Good call. What ends up being the issue? End zone view. Again, the Niners misunderstand and blow the center pole protection, right? Because we're pulling the center, these linemen are going to block down, which means that Nick Bolton is accounted for. However, Spencer Burford is the backup right guard. He's in for John Feliciano, who went down, sees Bolton, knows that the center's dropping and just tunnels on him. Just eyes to him immediately,

hands on him immediately, and lets Chris Jones run free. Just open gate here in the B gap. this issue caused some consternation on the interwebs. All right? We got John Feliciano tweeting. Never tweet kids. Tweeting's bad. I know you know all. You should know that's not Cole McKivitz's guy.

He said, A quick chop is not neat if the guy was supposed to block him and blocks him. And then Spencer Burford says, Sheesh, I open my app to this. Get well soon, bro, which that's nice, but also maybe not nice because he's hurt. And then Feliciano says, I'm sorry.

I woke up hungover and blow it out. I woke up hungover. don't let him see it. I'm trying to have one's back. I hurt you. It's effed up and I apologize. I'm going to have a great head of you. I'm sorry, bro.

Don't really know precisely what that means. But in general, this was a frustration for the 49ers, right? Is that multiple times now they messed up this particular protection. So anyway, Burford lets Chris Jones go free. He immediately pressures Brock Purdy. Brock says up throwing this away. They kick a field goal and we already know the end of the story. They lose.

So we can talk about protection choices and like, oh, why is George Kittle in the back field? You got to protect your right guard a little bit more. Why are you pulling the center in this situation? And all that's fine and well and good. But the nature is that Shannon's offense, which is so motion heavy, and which doesn't ask the quarterback to set protections. Like, it has always had static protection. It always has a protection call, and it's tough for them to work around it.

It's tough for them adjust. And they don't do a great job of getting extra bodies in on protection because they want to get five in the concept with all of their weapons. And, like, this has been true all year. And it was never a good matchup into Steve Spagnola. We talked about in the Chalk Wars episode and the preparation and the piece we wrote on the ringer, but how these condensed formations

could make it harder to suss out blitzes. Like, this was always a bad matchup from an ex-as-and-perspective. You can be mad at Shanahan and say, oh, well, he should have solved all the protection issues, but every offense has problems. Like, if you want to be this motion

on 70% of the snaps offense, if you want to be this, we have all these super weapons, Christian McCaffrey, Debo, Samuel, George Kittle, in and out of the backfield offense, you're not going to be as good of protections. There's always a cost.

There's always a second edge to the sword. And Shanahan's offense keeps getting him here, man. He's been like four to five NFC championship games. He's been to two Super Bowls. This is the best offensive coach we have. There was never an offense that was just 100% perfect. So how do we forget the last 19 weeks

where this coach brought these guys here? He brought this seventh round, Mr. Irrelevant quarterback here. And then in that game with two weeks of prep, Spaggs gets him on a few calls and we say, oh, it's bad. How is our memory that short? Anyway, people are mad at him at the overtime call. I don't think it's bad to take the ball first. The players probably should have known what was going on.

The quotes were kind of rough afterwards. I think that's embarrassing. He messed that up. Whatever. The idea that Shanahan is the issue with the 49ers in a game that was played over five quarters with this many crazy things going on against such a good defense coordinator in Spags

against such a good quarterback in Mahomes is just not interesting to me. He's one of the best coaches we got and I wish you won a Super Bowl because it'd be easier to argue, but he didn't. And he'll win another one later and he'll be fine. Stop being mean to Kyle and that'll do it. From here on the play sheet,

thank you so much for watching. Thank you to Kyle Shanahan for doing his best. I know it's tough, buddy. I believe in you. Thank you to Andy Reid, who's also very good and can probably give Kyle some advice about all this. Thank you to Corey McConnell for producing the episode. Thank you for watching all of our Super Bowl content. We have more content coming for you and see in the drafts.

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